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Nagios XI vs Packetbeat comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Nagios XI
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (28th), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th)
Packetbeat
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
66th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Packetbeat is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nagios XI2.3%
Packetbeat0.3%
Other97.4%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Network analytics have delivered lightweight, integrated visibility for search, observability, and security
Packetbeat analyzes specific protocols and is not suitable for full capture of all network traffic and network flows. I recall that Packetbeat can cover a limited number of protocols including ICMP, but not as deeply as other solutions. It covers NetFlows and these types of flows, but not at the level of a deep packet capture that you can find in the market where it taps every single packet in the network. Packetbeat is more about bringing statistics about the packets, but it doesn't capture these packets. The development intention of Packetbeat appears to be to provide a window for application monitoring and performance analytics, and for that purpose, it is doing sufficiently well. However, if the vendor has another goal to build a similar network monitoring solution that exists in the market, which is outside of Elastic's business nature, Packetbeat is a sensor that needs to be improved to the level of deep packet capture where it loses no packets in the network. That improvement would take Elastic to another level.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Nagios is stable and it's easy to use the monitoring software, which is why we chose this product."
"An excellent solution that is easy and intuitive to implement."
"Nagios XI helped me to draw the network and check for system failures."
"The most valuable features of Nagios XI are you can customize it based on your use case and requirements. It is flexible and easy to integrate with our systems. You can customize the solution by adding additional features using code."
"We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"The solution has a lot of plugins and scripts integrated with it."
"The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves."
"The beauty of Packetbeat is that it is easy, free, and lightweight, while other solutions are expensive and will accumulate a huge amount of data."
"Elastic's scalability, in terms of cluster robustness, is definitely the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"Technical support is an area that needs improvement. It is not available 24/7."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"The tool's AI model needs to be fixed."
"The product does not have SAP monitoring."
"The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic, and maybe having a GraphQL interface would resolve this."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"Packetbeat analyzes specific protocols and is not suitable for full capture of all network traffic and network flows."
"The scalability of the agent itself could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"We are using the free version of this solution."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Packetbeat?
Elastic is pretty cheap for large enterprises but unaffordable for small ones.
What needs improvement with Packetbeat?
I think that the scalability of the agent itself could be improved. It is also a bit limited in terms of capabilities. When a customer needs to customize the collection, I think it's tougher there.
What is your primary use case for Packetbeat?
I've been using Packetbeat ( /products/packetbeat-reviews ) for call centers, for logs, for observability, network monitoring, and some search engine optimization.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Information Not Available
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